Speaker
Description
The pursuit of neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) detection stands at the forefront of particle physics research, promising profound insights into fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model. nEXO, a cutting-edge experiment, endeavors to explore this phenomenon utilizing a 5-tonne liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chamber (TPC), enriched to 90% in Xe136, poised to achieve a half-life sensitivity exceeding 10^28 years after a decade of operation. The potential observation of 0νββ decay heralds transformative implications, suggesting novel physics characterized by lepton number non-conservation and substantiating the Majorana nature of neutrinos. Leveraging ionization and scintillation light to gauge energy, nEXO aims for energy resolutions below 1% at the Qββ endpoint, bolstered by meticulous design enhancements to mitigate background noise, including the utilization of electroformed copper and a careful selection of low-activity materials. Situated at SNOLAB, nEXO employs advanced detector configurations, featuring segmented anodes and a large-area SiPM array, to capture ionization electrons and scintillation photons, thus facilitating precise event reconstruction. Recent advancements in detector design and data analysis, including the adoption of deep neural network architectures, underscore nEXO's pursuit of enhancing signal-to-background discrimination. nEXO reaches a sensitivity to 0νββ half-life of 1.35×10^28 years over a decade-long observational span.
